Saudi Arabia threatens to recall envoys from Iran

Kingdom's deputy foreign minister says they will recall its diplomats from Iran unless it improves their protection.

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia has threatened to recall its diplomats from Iran unless the Islamic republic improves their protection, the kingdom’s deputy foreign minister told reporters on Sunday.

“I hope we won’t be obliged to withdraw our diplomatic mission from Tehran if Iran fails to take the necessary measures to protect it,”  Prince Turki bin Mohammed told reporters. Iranian students demonstrated on Monday outside the Saudi embassy in Tehran to condemn Riyadh’s military intervention in Bahrain and the “murder” of Bahraini citizens, the official IRNA news agency had reported. Iran’s Fars news agency, which is close to conservatives, had reported that “six to seven petrol bombs were hurled against the embassy” as students chanted slogans against the ruling Sunni dynasties in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. On Sunday, Prince Turki said: “Shias in the Gulf are our brothers and have national rights under the umbrella of their loyalty (to their countries) and not to the outside.”

Iran has repeatedly condemned the dispatch of Saudi troops to Bahrain to support the Bahraini forces’ crackdown on demonstrations there by Shias who form the majority of the population of the country.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 18^th,  2011.